


With a little help from my friends

by bluebells



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caitlin Snow is Killer Frost, Christina McGee is the Godmother, Gen, Non-canon Killer Frost origin story, Operation Save Jesse, Patty Spivot's metahuman title is pending patent by Cisco Ramon, Post-Episode: s02e09, Pre-Mid Season 2 Return, Questionable Allies Be Damned, winter is coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5708551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been so certain that Barry was the answer. </p><p>Funny how the metahuman Harrison needs may have been at his own doorstep the entire time.</p><p>(The story where Cisco has a vision that sends Harrison Wells home to seek the help of an old friend, and finds he isn't the only one who's been busy in pursuit of Zoom.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a little help from my friends

**Author's Note:**

> First published story in a new fandom! Happy to dip my toes in for a week that appreciates every incarnation of my favourite sometimes-sociopath. 
> 
> I was given the options of Cisco Ramon, Christina McGee, and Patty Spivot. I had a lot of fun finding a story that allowed me to combine all of them. Thank you, Earth-1, for giving me much logic to recycle for Earth-2.

“As a disclaimer, I just want to say: it was an accident, but I think you’ll thank me,” Cisco says.

Burger halfway to his mouth, Harrison deflates, jaw clenching. He won’t be allowed to enjoy his lunch today, will he? “Your timing, Ramon, needs work. And what disaster have you prepared to ruin my appetite?”

It is the first and last time he’ll permit anyone to accompany him on a lunch break. Harrison so rarely remembers to eat at socially acceptable times. When he does venture out during the daylight, he likes to stay under the radar. It’s distinctly harder to brave Central City’s shopping mall when he takes company. Harrison isn’t eager to be recognised as his doppelganger and hauled in for the personal crime of sharing a face.

Beside Harrison on the park bench, Cisco straightens, his posture tightened with affront. “Hey, there’s no disaster… yet. And I didn’t _mean_ to vibe on you.”

Harrison’s stomach drops so suddenly it leaves him dizzy, and he lowers his burger. “You vibed on me? Again?”

Jesse. Remembering the way she shook in his arms, her dirty face smeared with tears – the baseline stress that is the new systolic pulse of Harrison’s life cuts through his ravenous hunger, stirring something ill and uneasy in its wake. _Don’t let him take me back there._ Harrison may have been the leading entrepreneur in tech back on Earth-2, but he had no app, no gadget, to help him do his first and most important job.

“You know I can’t control it!” Cisco is protesting when the static clears from Harrison’s ears, and he swipes Harrison’s small basket of fries.

 _Because you stubbornly refuse to practice,_ Harrison thinks, grabbing Cisco’s sleeve. “What did you vibe on me?” He doesn’t care much for Cisco’s yelp of annoyance. At least there’s no longer any fear when Cisco glares at him. “Was it Jesse? What did you see?”

Cisco brushes the hand off his arm. “Chill, man, I’m sorry. Yeah, it was your daughter and I’m pretty sure… Doctor McGee?”

Harrison blinks, his lunch forgotten. “Christina?”

“Does she head Mercury Labs on your Earth as well?”

“Hmm,” Harrison rubs his chin, tugging lightly on his ear as he remembers the last time he’d set eyes on Christina McGee of Earth Two. “Not exactly. You think it was the McGee of my Earth?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure, actually.”

Well. Shit. “Why is this good news for us?”

///

 _In his vision, Cisco described seeing Jesse in an embrace with Doctor Christina McGee._

_“How was she?” Harrison pressed. “Was Jesse all right? Was she hurt?”_

_Cisco nodded, blinking as if to clear his vision. “Yeah, yeah, she was crying, but… I think she was relieved.”_

///

When Harrison Wells is finally reunited with Christina McGee, a handshake seems like the safest gesture. In retrospect, his anticipation at their reunion definitely clouded his foresight, because when the apartment door opens, he does not expect to be struck across the face with an open palm.

Blinking in shock, Harrison catches himself on the back step and rolls his jaw, his cheek still smarting from the blow. He had forgotten how hard she can swing. “Well. Hello, Christina.”

His oldest friend holds herself deathly still on the threshold to her home, though this is not an address Harrison has seen before.  

It took the better part of two weeks, three favours he hopes are never collected, and a lot of posturing with the gun stolen from Christina’s counterpart, to bring him here. So far, Team Flash of the other Earth have failed to catch up to him. If they even tried to pursue him.  

Harrison tells himself he doesn’t feel bad for leaving without saying goodbye. He just had a horrible feeling they would try to come with him. Between Cisco’s visions and Barry’s speed, Harrison didn’t trust his odds of staying ahead of them. He hopes they aren’t too angry at him for disabling the speed canon behind his exit, but it may have bought him valuable time.

Looking into the bright glare of Christina’s McGee’s rage, tears building in her eyes, Harrison isn’t sure he traded in for the better option.

Harrison has only witnessed Christina this angry once before in his lifetime, and it was expressed then in his defence. How the times changed.

“How dare you, Harrison Wells. My goddaughter was kidnapped by a mad man on national news, and then you also disappear – for months! Without a word, without any consideration for the people in your life, this is my family, too, Harrison, _how dare you_!” And then abruptly, Christina softens, almost as an afterthought of overdue business, “Are you all right?”

Harrison sighs, “Yes, I’m fine, I was just—“ His head whips to the side under the force of her second blow. He almost sees stars, the scent and flavour of blood flares in his senses. Wow. Perhaps he could have chosen his words more carefully. Slowly raising his hands in defence, he is careful meeting the heat of her glare as he licks the cut on his inner lip. “I might have deserved that one, but _please….?”_

“I thought you were dead,” Christina says, thickly. “Do you have any idea what that was like? Not knowing, every day, until the months had tallied, the police found nothing, and everyone was telling me you had either run away or been taken. But I thought, _no.”_ The disappointment scrapes roughly like gravel in her voice, loose and raw. “Harrison Wells would never run. He would never abandon his daughter. After so many months, I thought… he must be dead. Do you know what it’s like, not knowing?”

Harrison strokes one thumb against the knuckle of his other, back and forth. Funny, it does nothing to soothe the white knot of pain that has corded tight every day with Jesse’s absence. But perched upon it, hope spreads its feathers. “I live with that uncertainty… each day. Christina,” Harrison sighs, unable to hold her gaze. She’s right. He cups his fist before his chest in a subconscious gesture of appeal, willing himself to find the right words. “I’m sorry. I panicked and I acted unthinkingly. I have been selfish. You know I am. I’m sorry.”

Christina’s expression crumbles only for a moment. She clears the few tears from her cheeks and swallows with some difficulty. Her hand closes around his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Harrison. And you may be twice as selfish as the world thinks you are, but you’ve always given as much as you took. Is there any word of Jesse?”

“So, she’s not with you?”

“What -- of course not! Would I have you linger at my door like a salesman if she were here?”

The small, fluttering whisper of hope gutters out within his ribs, and Harrison struggles to speak through the strangle of his throat. His grief is trying to choke him, but he will not yield until Jesse is home and safe. “She’s still alive. I didn’t run, Christina. I’ve been working to get her back. And now, I’ve struck a deal with _Zoom_. If I do what he wants, he’ll let her go.”

Christina is searching his face carefully when he meets her eyes, rimmed red with tears and a weariness he hadn’t noticed before. Instead of asking Harrison what he’s bartered, she says, “And do you think we can trust him? Will he release her?”

The knot tugs painfully in Harrison’s chest, almost dizzying in his despair, but his desperation to recover Jesse begs him to ignore it. “I don’t know. Zoom is a creature so focused on his quest for power, and he’s collected so much of it, he’s unburdened by honour or leverage like the rest of us. I don’t know. But I have to try.”

“I wish you’d thought of me, Harrison,” Christina says, squeezing his shoulder, she ushers him inside and leads him through the foyer of her safehouse, a warm apartment with pearl white walls of plaster and steel, marble finishings. Even in hiding, Harrison notes with amusement that Christina’s tastes still ran towards the expensive. “In science our pursuits benefit from the insight of our peers, and for family, we should brook no compromise. When I was released from _Mercury Labs,_ I continued to study Zoom’s speed force and your metahuman phenomenon. I had no idea I might find a solution within my own family. _You_ aren’t the only one who’s been working these last months to understand that creature.”

He looks twice at her, but Christina doesn’t pause. All this time, Harrison never knew Christina had extended family -- but, truth be told, Christina seldom spoke of them voluntarily. Most of their conversations historically revolved around the nature of their work or Harrison and _his family._

They round a dividing wall, and Harrison stumbles to a halt before the sight of two strikingly familiar women reclining on Christina’s lounge. In the dusky glow of the small fireplace set within the wall, both women are pale as a death shroud, their hair white as snow.

Metahumans. Beyond human, a second order of mankind. Interesting, the odds that his Earth and the Earth of his new allies would elect the same label for this Wells-made phenomenon.

He almost spares a thought of concern for their health until Caitlin Snow lowers the newspaper to her lap, and her arched look betrays no symptom of frailty or fatigue. Her eyes are a striking pale blue even in the firelight. Harrison wonders if her ability is to petrify people to stone.

“Caitlin,” Harrison breathes, before he can stop himself. Rather than answer, Caitlin directs her attention to the woman at his side.

“And who is this, Tina?” Caitlin asks, an insouciant drawl. “I didn’t know we were receiving visitors.”

“This is Harrison Wells, girls, Jesse’s father, and one of my very oldest, dearest friends.” Christina’s hand is firm and steady on Harrison’s shoulder. “Harrison, may I introduce Doctor Caitlin Snow and Patricia Spivot, my former research assistants and now metahumans, courtesy of your dark matter leak.”

“Oh, the runaway?” In the lounge’s opposite corner, Patty Spivot looks up from a pulsing golden orb in her hands. Thin sparks of electricity arc across her knuckles. Unlike the untouched air of Caitlin beside her, blue veins stand prominently at Patty’s temple and the tendons corded from her wrists to her fingertips. There’s something a little weary and wild in the light of Patty’s stare.

“I didn’t run. I left to find an answer to help my daughter.” Harrison can’t stop looking between the two women on the lounge with their stares of a sphinx. He can’t reconcile them with the kind scientist and smiling officer waiting with the rest of his team back on the other Earth.

His team. That had snuck up on him.

He glances to Christina who is regarding the two women with a pride Harrison has felt burn in himself each time he looked on Jesse. But there is also a caution at the underlying edge of Christina’s smile, curling cold and hard. It reminds him of all those times he urged Jesse not to slow her genius for pity of others or fear of not fitting in. His little girl was not going to make herself small for the comfort or convenience of smaller minds.

Harrison wonders if they want an apology. “It turns out, I may have been looking in the wrong place. So, when you said family…..”

“No blood relation, but we keep each other alive and I keep the girls out of jail,” Christina says.

Harrison glances between the three women. “They were affected, but not you?”

“Correct,” Christina ducks her head in a low bow, as though with regret. “When your particle accelerator exploded, I was not with Caitlin and Patricia testing our prototype power cells. The symptoms didn’t present themselves until much later, so we rather thought we had escaped without issue.”

“Until my girlfriend died of hypothermia in our bed,” Caitlin says, eyes sharp.

“And I became a human lightning rod,” Patty smiles, a thin veneer that barely lifts her mouth.

“You see, Harrison, in our misfortune, we may have been given the exact cards we need to confront Zoom. Cold is the opposite of speed and heat; we have been running tests for Doctor Snow to absorb thermal radiation, thereby decreasing ambient temperatures or an individual subject to absolute zero, and from our readings so far, Zoom also generates enough electricity to sustain Patty for life.”

Patty's smile quirks with wicked relish, teeth gleaming. “If we can get close enough. Or better yet – trap him. So, he’s going to help us?”

Christina returns her smile: a kinder, benevolent shade of ruthless will. “We’re going to help him bring Jesse home. The family is almost back together.”

His breath suddenly misting on the air, Harrison watches the electricity crackle in Patty’s eyes when she laughs. He reaches for the memory of Cisco’s vision to quiet the spike of his heart and its painful reverberation through his whole body, weakening his knees. He thinks of Jesse, safe… with Christina McGee.

Christina winds her arm through his with a soft laugh of delight at the headline Caitlin shows them from her newspaper. Harrison squints until the foremost article coheres into a bold headline of ‘WINTER IS COMING’ above a centre-piece image of two very familiar women. In the photo, Patty is barely recognisable, eyes eclipsed in light like the lens flare of a bad Photoshop joke, her expression twisted in a snarl of cold determination. She is postured mid-lunge as though she is reaching for something beyond the camera’s vision. From her fingertips, white-blue lightning arcs in hungry bolts of pure energy. At her side, hands raised in mockery of a benediction, is none other than Caitlin herself, her image is obscured by a strange mist raining from her palms.

Beneath, the caption reads ‘The Pale Sisters strike _Luthor Corp._ Pictured above: Patty Spivot and Caitlin Snow, previous employees of _Mercury Labs_ , turn rogue sights to Metropolis.’

Harrison doesn’t know about this new team, this ‘family’ that Christina has constructed for herself, but he trusts Christina’s devotion to her goddaughter. Of one thing, Harrison is perfectly clear: at the end of all this, Jesse will be returning home with him. He doesn’t care who needs to stand at his shoulder to make it happen.

 _We’re coming for you, Jesse._

**Author's Note:**

> Although I'm still waiting for Team Flash to discover Eobard's super secret research on Farooq Gibran's abilities to extract Barry's speed force following S01E07 'Power Outage', the more I read, the more I realise there are plenty of metas with canonical abilities to affect Zoom or the Speed Force. It just seems that nobody knows how to use the full extent of their abilities yet.
> 
> In the original version of this, Team Flash accompanied Harrison for at least 4k words to Earth-2 where they argued with Hartley Rathaway, the new head of Mercury Labs for information. 
> 
> I realised it would become a sprawling ensemble piece that would not conclude by 19th January unless I rethought my options. I love every real and imagined version of Tom Cavanagh as Harrison Wells. I did not expect to enjoy this show so much when I first ranted my frustrations with the pilot at my friends, but I've been so pleasantly surprised.
> 
> Come join me on [tumblr](http://bellsyblue.tumblr.com/) where we reblog a lot of things that make us laugh while grappling with physics for this fandom.


End file.
